


Turintamar

by Debbie, Mirlinish



Category: Original Work
Genre: Dragons, Fantasy, Griffins, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-09
Updated: 2012-08-23
Packaged: 2017-12-03 06:07:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/695054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Debbie/pseuds/Debbie, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mirlinish/pseuds/Mirlinish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dylan is a young man who is obsessed with dragon's. Though dragon's are extinct for over 500 years, his knowledge about the creatures is beyond great and on top of that useless according to his people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dragon's Nest

**Author's Note:**

> English is not my first language and I don't have a beta anymore..  
> Grammarnazi's will hate me..

Dylan stared at a sign above the inn; ‘Dragon’s nest’. He chuckled amused. He tightened his bandana tighter in his brown-reddish hair and pulled his bag further onto his shoulder. “The closer we get, the more dragon related things we see, don’t we Gry?” He looked down to his knee high griffin with a small smile on his lips.

The young -and far too small- creature frolicked next to the young man’s feet, clicked with his beak and wagged its lion’s tail cheerfully.

Dylan and Grey both came from a city called Leavis the city of Griffins, where people and Griffin’s live side by side. It was a peaceful and hardworking city, what meant that Dylan and Gry were the outcast. Gry because he was too small for an Griffin and Dylan because he was obsessed with a subject nobody was interested in anymore; Dragons. The creatures extinct about 200 years ago and knowledge about the creatures was rare. Throughout the years Dylan had done anything to find every single fact that he could find about dragons. The people in Leavis, and probably the rest of the world -if they knew- saw him as an outcast. Knowledge about dragons was all that he had. He wasn’t a hardworking man, he couldn’t fight, he couldn’t cook, and he knew nothing about anything, except for dragons. Though he never regret learning so much about dragons. It was his life and he didn’t want it any other way. Not even now people were looking down to him.

Dylan chuckled and turned back to the inn. “Let’s see if there is still a bed left for us.” He said and stepped towards the front door. The young man opened the door and let his griffin in before he followed.

Despite that the inn was in the middle of nowhere it was surprisingly crowded. Almost every seat was taken and the tables were filled with empty tankards, while the still filled where held by the people, ready to be emptied. The people in the inn were loudly laughing or yelling their stories to people only a few steps away from them. Drunk and overenthusiastic.

Dylan took a quick glance to Gry, to make sure the animal was behaving and then stepping towards the innkeeper behind the bar.

The man looked up at Dylan and then turned his eyes down to the small griffin. He took a tankard from the bar and start cleaning it, not saying a single word to Dylan.

“A room for one.” Dylan said, not bothered that the man didn’t ask him what he needed. “And the daily dish.”

The innkeeper pulled his eyes off Gry and turned them back to Dylan. “12 silver.” He said surly. It was clear that the man wasn’t really fond of the griffin in his inn, but neither did he tell them to leave.

Dylan reached for his pocket and grabbed his purse. He turned to Gry for a moment and saw the creature sniffing around. It reminded him that his griffin was probably hungry as well. “Could I order a fresh fish or an uncooked chicken as well?” Dylan asked the innkeeper. “Anything is good, it’s for my griffin.”

The innkeeper stared at him slightly annoyed. “13 silver.” He then said, still cleaning the same tankard and in the corner of his eye looking at Gry as if he was hoping the half bird would do something that would allow him to throw Dylan and Gry out.

Without complaining Dylan paid the innkeeper, then turned away from the bar and looked through the inn. “Come, Gry.” He said. “Let’s find ourselves a table.”

It didn’t take him to long until he found a small table in the back. There was only a single seat left, because the others in the inn had taken the other seats to sit down with their friends. Luckily Dylan was the only one who needed a chair.

Dylan sat down and placed his bag next to his chair. He saw Gry was still sniffing around and petted the half bird’s head gently when it passed him.

That same moment a friendly looking man walked up to the two and reached for the small griffin. “I’ve never seen a griffin that small. “ He said interested. “It is a griffin, isn’t it?”

Gry immediately reacted to the man’s hand. He unfolded his wings, opened his beak dangerously into the man’s direction and screeched deafening.

The man backed off quickly and the whole inn was suddenly quiet.

Gry stopped screeching as soon as the man backed off, but his wings were still unfolded and he was staring dangerously at the man.

Dylan quickly kneeled next to the griffin. “Don’t do that, Gry.” He said and then turned to the man who had tried to touch his pet. “I’m sorry. Gry doesn’t like strangers.” He said. “Yes, it’s a griffin, but nobody understands why it’s so small. Where I come from griffins are very common. Gry was repudiated, because he was different from the others.” Just like Dylan was. Not that he was disowned, but he was different than his people. In the end he left on his own. Just to relieve his people from him. He wasn’t adding anything to the city anyway.

As soon as Dylan told the griffin to calm down, Gry did. He folded his wings back and continued sniffing around the table, as if nothing had happened.

The innkeeper’s wife walked up to them and placed a poorly filled plate on the table. Without a single word she threw a dead chicken into Gry’s direction. The animal quickly turned to the chicken and smelled it. He grabbed the chicken with he’s front claws and just wanted to eat when he suddenly stiffened. His eyes were fixed at something and his pupils became smaller. He slowly lowered his body, wings and head and positions his back legs as if he wanted to jump onto something.

Dylan, who noticed that Gry wasn’t eating, turned to the griffin. “What is the matter?” He asked Gry, not expecting an answer and tried to see what the half bird was looking at.

Then out of nowhere Gry suddenly took a sprint. Dylan lost him out of his eye, but the yelling women and irritated men indicated where the griffin was.

“Gry!” He called for the griffin. He was slightly shocked and curious at the same time. He wondered what he was after and tried to find the half bird within the crowd.

After he called for Gry a few times more, it suddenly became quiet. Gry had stopped running and after a few second he walked back to its owner with a giant rat in its beak. He threw his head back and worked the rat down his throat.

Dylan chuckled at first, but then reminded himself of the nuisance he had cause. He turned to the innkeeper’s wife, who still stood close to his table. Better to apologise before they would get thrown out. “I’m sorry for my griffin’s beha...” His sentence was cut off by the woman.

“Don’t worry son. My husband wasn’t able to keep that filthy rat out of my kitchen.” The woman had a slightly friendlier expression on her face. Then she walked away again.

Dylan chuckled again and turned to the quiet people in the inn. When he did so they slowly started to talk again and turned away from Dylan and Gry, except for the man who had tried to pet the griffin before. “That is indeed a very extraordinary pet you have.” He said still interested. But before he could say anything more, someone interrupted him.

“Extraordinary?” A cracked voice suddenly overwhelmed the noise in the inn. “I’ll tell ye what’s really extraordinary!”

The friendly man sighed and placed a hand in front of his eyes. “There he goes again.” The man said and quickly turned away from Dylan’s table. Clearly not planning to get involved in the old man that was walking towards Dylan and Gry.

At first he looked like quite a normal man, but the closer he came the more insane he seemed to look. He walked limp and his back was bend in a weird way; forward and slightly to the side. Dylan couldn’t help, but think this man was the local nutjob. It wasn’t really the nicest thing he had every thought, but the man couldn’t be called anything other than that.

The man walked straight to Dylan and pointed his cane to his face. “Dragons son! Dragons! I’m tellin' ye!”

“Dragons?” Dylan asked surprised, but full enthusiasm as well. He slowly lead the cane away from his face. The nutjob had his attention within a few second. A sparkle of interest appeared in his eyes, while he waited for the man to continue.

“Leave the boy, Tom.” Another man told the nutjob strict and really annoyed, before the old man was even able to tell his story.

Dylan didn’t take his eyes off the nutjob. “No, tell me.” He said and noiced himself sitting on the tip of his chair. “What about dragons?”

Everyone stared at Dylan, visibly thinking what on earth he was thinking. Even the nutjob seemed surprised that someone actually wanted to hear his story.

The nutjob ordered his thoughts back in line as far as that was possible for a nutjob and walked even closer to Dylan, almost bumping their heads together. “Dragons, son!” He said and touched Dylan’s arm. “They exist!” The nutjob’s eyes widened. “Giant creatures! Wings longer than I ever saw on a bird!” The old man made a wide arm gesture, giving the word ‘giant’ a bit more strength.

Dylan didn’t say a word and quickly grabbed his bag. He took his journal out of it as well as a charcoal to write with.

“Claws that can break every single bone in your body!” The nutjob continued not interrupted by Dylan’s action.

“What did it look like?” Dylan asked. “Eye colour, scale structure, that sort of things.” The story of the nutjob probably wasn’t true, but he still wanted to know what kind of dragon the man believed he had seen. He quickly scribbled down the things the nutjob told him thus far and waited for the rest.

The nutjob looked at him quietly, either because he was really surprised that Dylan was curious or because he was thinking what the dragon had looked like. Then he looked into the distance, not seeing. “Dark blue almost black, its eyes red but as dark as th’ blue, scales shinin’ as if they were wet and two horns where ones ears should be.”

Dylan quickly wrote down everything the man told him. “Did you see his teeth?” Dylan asked the nutjob.

The nutjob was quiet for a second time. “I did nae.” He finally answered. He seemed a little defeated that he couldn’t answer the question.

“Did it breath anything? Fire, gas, lighting?” Dylan continued asking.

The man shook his head slowly. “But its tail was twice as long as its body.” He said, trying to give Dylan better information. In the meanwhile he tried to see what the young man was writing down and what was already written in the journal.

Dylan suddenly stopped writing and looked up at the man. He was clearly surprised, his mouth slightly opened as he processed the idea he suddenly got. A twinkling in his eyes indicated that he was amused by the information. He turned back to his journal and started leaving through it. When he found the page he was searching for he turned it towards the nutjob, showing him a picture of a dragon with a round snout and a long tail. “The Dew Gatherer. It’s a dragon from the southern parts of the land. It flies through the air as if it’s swimming through water. Its scales are slightly pointing out. It flies through the clouds to gathers water drops under those scales. That way it can cool itself down, because it can’t sweat.” Dylan explained the nutjob enthusiastic.

The nutjob on his turn widened his eyes. His lips moved while he tried to say something, but it took him longer to find the words than he had expected. “That’s it son! That’s th’ dragon!” He almost yelled.

Dylan chuckled amused and placed his journal back on the table, looking at the drawing. Then he took a deep breath. The corners of his mouth slowly dropped in disappointment. “I’m sorry.” Dylan suddenly told the nutjob. “They extinct more than 500 years ago.” Even though it was amusing that the nutjob thought he had seen such a dragon alive, it was impossible. Dragons had extinct 200 years ago and the Dew Gatherer was one of the first to die out. The man had probably seen a picture of the dragon and imagined the dragon to be real in a drunk mood. Who knows what a nutjob could hallucinate about.

“Nae, son!” The nutjob said quickly and looked at Dylan “I saw it! Flyin’ ‘igh above me head!” He brought his hands into the air to empathise his words. Dylan look at the nutjob to make sure if the man was really speaking the truth, if he really had seen a living dragon, but before he had the chance one of the other man in the inn pulled the nutjob away from him.

“I had enough of your wild fantasies, Tom!” The man said irritated and pulled him toward the front door to throw him out.

Dylan stood up to follow the nutjob, but he was pushed back onto his chair by the innkeeper. “Bring him back and I’ll throw you out as well.” He said calm but with a strict tone in his voice.

Dylan looked at the innkeeper and doubted shortly, but then he decided to stay. Being thrown out wasn’t an option; he needed a place to sleep for the night.

Gry, who had been eating next to Dylan on the floor, screeched dangerously towards the innkeeper, warning him to let his owner go. Dylan looked down at Gry and shushed him quickly. An angry griffin would probably worsen the mood of the innkeeper.

The innkeeper raised an eyebrow, let go of Dylan and walked back to his bar.

When he was completely out of sight, Dylan bend towards the griffin. “Follow him.” He said as he pointed carefully into the direction of the door, where the nutjob just had been thrown out.

The rather intelligent creature understood the request of its owner and quickly walked towards the door, where he waited for someone to leave and slipped out of the inn.

Dylan slowly sat back up and looked at the door until Gry was outside. Then he turned to his dinner, which was already cold. He chuckled, not bothered by his cold food. His eyes travelled to his journal that lay next to his plate and smiled satisfied. It indeed was a wonderful thought that maybe this nutjob could have seen a real living dragon. Then, without complaining, he start eating.

\---

At the end of the evening, he walked to the innkeeper to ask him which room he could use. The wife of the innkeeper walked him to his room and gave him the key.

When he opened the door, Gry just came back. Without the nutjob.

Dylan let the griffin in his room, closed the door behind him and sat down on the bed. “You didn’t find him, did you?” He asked the half bird. He petted the griffin on his head and grabbed his bag to find a snack for the animal.

Gry clicked cheerfully with his beak when he received the chicken that he hadn’t finished downstairs.

Dylan smiled at the griffin and watch him eating for a bit. Then he grabbed his journal and walked towards the window. He sat down on the chair that stood there and looked at the notes he took from the nutjob. “I want to believe him, Gry.” He said and stared out of the window; staring at the forest in the distance. The one which would be the start of their real search for dragon remainings. “I really do, but it is impossible.” He took a deep breath and tried to imagine what he would feel or what he would do if he would have seen the dew gatherer. A small smile appeared on his lips. Probably he would just stand there and stare at the amazing sight.

Gry, who was completely ignoring his owner, cooed soft and satisfied, while he pulled the chicken’s meat of its bones, making a mess of his surroundings.

Dylan chuckled. “Don’t make a mess, ok?” He said and stood up. “I’m going to bed. Tomorrow will yet again be a long day.” He sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled his shoes and shirt off, before he lay down and pulled the sheets over him. “We are getting so close.” He mumbled satisfied. He closed his eyes and fell asleep before he had the chance to say goodnight to Gry.

\---

The next day Dylan and Gry were literally thrown out of the inn. During the night, Gry had managed to make one huge mess of their hired room. Chicken bones were spread through the room and even the ceiling was covered with blood stains.

Dylan rubbed the back of his head while he tried to apologise to the innkeeper and his wife, but they did not listen and with a loud bang the Innkeeper shut his door, leaving Dylan and Gry outside.

Dylan sighed and looked at Gry. “Next time I’ll give you chicken breast again, just like always.” He informed the griffin that softly cooed next to his feet, not bothered that they were thrown out at all.

Dylan turned his back to the inn and stared over the empty fields in front of him. In the distance he saw the beginning of a forest that grow on the mountain’s foot and partly over it. That forest was the place they would start searching. It was the last place where dragon’s had been seen by humans and Dylan was positive that there would be remaining of the giant creatures.

“Let’s go.” Dylan then said. “We’ll have to search for our breakfast during the day.” He threw his bag over his shoulder and walked into the direction of the forest.

“Son!”

Dylan looked up when he recognised the cracking voice. The old nutjob from the night before walked up to them.

“Where are ye headin’, son?” The nutjob asked slightly panicked.

Dylan smiled. “I’m searching for dragon remains; bones or maybe if I’m lucky even more.” He carefully referred to the story of the nutjob the night before.

“No, son!” The nutjob said. “Don’t go there! It’s t’ dangerous t’ go t’ th’ forest!”

Dylan stared quietly at the man. For some reason he started to believe him. This man was actually trying to protect him; at least that was what he looked like. “You really saw a real dragon, didn’t you?”

“Of course son!” He nutjob said with the same panicked tone in his voice. “I saw ‘t with me own eyes!”

Dylan frowned. He really wanted to believe this, but it was difficult to ignore the facts. “When did you see it?”

The nutjob who seemed to be glad that Dylan was interested again, grabbed Dylan’s arm and looked him straight into his eyes. “Years ago, son. I be still a young man.”

Dylan licked his lips, thinking what possibilities there were. “The Dew Gatherer had a long life span. It could be hundreds of years before it died. Maybe the one you saw was the last one which had been hidden for 200 years. A dragon has a strong sense for danger. It must have hidden itself.”

The nutjob stared at Dylan. “You know a lot about them, son.” The nutjob commented frowning.

Dylan smiled proudly. “I’ve been interested in them ever since I could understand what a dragon was. They fascinate me. I would love to find the one you saw.”

The nutjob blinked and let go of Dylan’s arm. “Be careful, son. Dragon’s be dangerous creatures.”

Dylan nodded. “Thank you, Tom.” He said, remembering the nutjob’s name. He pulled his bag further onto his shoulder and smiled at the nutjob. “I’ll be going now. It was nice to speak with you. You are the first with whom I could talk about dragons.” With that he signed Gry to follow him and walked away, heading for the forest.

**~To Be Continued~**


	2. The Puzzle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> English is not my first language and I don't have a beta anymore..  
> Grammarnazi's will hate me..

Dylan looked around him. No birds were singing or even flew above his head. No paths had formed in the dirt made by deer or boar. It was as if the forest was completely empty apart from the trees and plants.

The small griffin that walked next to him held its head low and didn’t bring out a single sound. The half bird clearly wasn’t feeling comfortable in the forest and Dylan could understand why; the forest gave him slight chills as well.

“Maybe that dragon is still around.” Dylan suddenly said. The tone in his voice had changed from anxious to enthusiastic and a smile had appeared on his lips. He badly wanted to see a living dragon, that would be even better than finding their remaining.

Not paying enough attention to the ground, Dylan’s foot got stuck behind something. He lost his balance and fell face forward on the ground.

Gry jumped away when his owner fell next to him. The animal stared at his owner for a while and then pressed it’s head against Dylan’s arm, telling him to stand up.

Dylan sighed softly and pushed himself back on his feet. Irritated he looked over his shoulder to see what had caused him to fall down.

His eyes fell on a white projection that stuck out of the ground. Dylan raised his eyebrows surprised. “That is a very strange roo..” He stopped in the middle of his sentence when he suddenly got an hunch.

He sat down on one knee and looked at the projection. He brought his hand to the, what he had first thought was a, root and stroke it. It didn’t felt like wood, more like... “Bone?” Dylan said astonished.

When the surprise fade away, Dylan’s eyes widened quickly. “Gry! It’s a bone!” He called out to the griffin and without hesitation he start digging it out of the dirt.

It took only a few minutes before the young man revealed a giant and slightly bended bone out of the ground. He tried to lift it up, but the bone was too heavy to carry it on his own.

Dylan start inspecting the bone from top to bottom not leaving a single crack or unevenness escape his attention.

“This is definitely a dragon bone! Probably a rib.” He suddenly said. His heart was pounding quickly in his chest, this was what he had searched for, for such a long time and he finally found it.

Gry was ignoring his owner and looked around, searching for something.

Dylan ignored the half-bird as well and grabbed his bag. He took his journal out and wrote down literally everything that he could about the bone.

All of a sudden Gry screeched to its owner.

Dylan looked up shocked. “Gry?!” He called out shocked, scared that something had happened to his pet. He grabbed his bag and journal and ran towards the griffin.

His eyes widened when he suddenly face an enormous dragon skull, half buried in the ground. Gry tried dig out the giant skull, but didn’t make a difference on his own. Behind the skull the cervical lead to gigantic ribs, backbones and the bones of the dragon’s tail. On both sides of the shoulders, bones stuck out to the side that probably belonged to the wings of the dragon.

Stunned Dylan stared at the skeleton. He had never even hoped to find a skeleton as complete as the one before him. Amazed the young man walked closer to the skull and ran his hand over the rough surface, thrilled by his find. His skeleton was pure treasure to him.

He wandered aside of the skeleton and when he walked past the rear legs, he stopped, following the curves of the tail with his eyes. It was then that he noticed the stone wall behind the skeleton and the, with dragons engraved, opening within it.

For a moment the skeleton wasn’t what tickled his curiosity most. Could there be a change that he would find more than just remaining? He slowly walked to the opening. First his attention was completely turned to the engravings, but when he was close enough to look past the opening, his eyes widened.

He looked into a cave, the walls covered with engravings of dragons and words written in a language that most people couldn’t read, though he could. In the middle of the room stood a cylindrical table about as high as Dylan’s waist.

Dylan walked into the cave, closer to the wall and noticed that the wall and the floor were separated by a fifteen feet wide abyss. He stopped and quietly looked down into the depts.

When he decided that he couldn’t see the bottom, he turned his face up to the wall. The words written on the wall were too small to read from such a distance and he was slightly irritated about it. He walked along the edge, making sure that he wouldn’t fall into the depths and searched for words large enough to read.

He found one. It was the only word in the entire cave that was written big enough to be readably even outside of the cave. Dylan decoded the strange letters as ‘Turintamar’ but he had no idea what it meant.

He pulled his eyes away from the walls and turned his attention to the table. He walked towards it and frowned. It wasn’t just an ordinary table. In the middle, on a circular stone plate, four arrows and words were written in the same strange alphabet. He could easily translate them as: north, east, south and west. The plate was surrounded with four stone rings with on each a dragon engraved.

Dylan quietly looked at the plate, trying to figure out what it could be. He reached for one of the rings and tried to move it. It worked.

A sparkling appeared into his eyes. “It’s a puzzle.” He mumbled to no one in particular. Already dying to solve it, he grabbed his journal and wrote down what he had found until then. After that he turned back to the puzzle.

The first thing he noticed was that the cardinal direction were pointing the wrong directions. He moved the plate and a mere few moments after he let it go, the plate fell a tad lower into the puzzle.

Dylan took a step back, for a moment scared something would happen, but it stayed quiet. He looked around to see if something had changed but the walls still looked the same. Guessing that it just meant that the plate was turned into the right direction, he looked down at the rings.

“Four, dragon’s.” He mumbled. “Gry, help me.” He knew the half bird couldn’t help him, but talking to the bird, in general, worked to help him sort out his thoughts.

Gry cooed, but didn’t come as quickly as the griffin normally did. Dylan looked up at the bird and saw it was trying to pull an enormous bone with him.

Dylan chuckled. He knew he should be angry that the bird was playing with the ancient dragon bone, but the young man could impossibly get angry at the playful griffin. “You had to take the biggest that you could find, hadn’t you?” He asked the half bird.

Gry only react with a soft coo and continued pulling on the bone, trying to pull it inside of the cave.

Dylan shook his head and turned back to the puzzle. “What do those dragons have in common? Or better said, what don’t they have in common?” He asked out loud. “Something that has something to do with the cardinal directions.”

Dylan pulled his bag off his shoulder and grabbed all the journal’s that he had. Quietly he started browsing through them, hoping to find useful information.

He compared the dragon engravings with the dragons that he knew and found what they were called. Then he started to compare them. The first thing that he compared were the areas in which they had lived. But he could scratch that option when he figured two of the dragons had lived in the same cardinal direction.

He stared at the plates and when he couldn’t think of anything he turned to the walls. He searched the engravings for information, but the words were still too far away to read and neither did the dragon pictures help him.

After a while he let himself slight with his back against the table down to the ground. His journals lay open next to him and he stared at the dragons.

Gry, who was done playing with the bone, walked to Dylan and crawled close next to him. “I don’t know how to solve it, Gry.” He said sighing. “We have a Black Inferno, a fire dragon that lived in the south, mostly on top of a volcano, but also in desserts; a Cyclone diver, an air dragon who lived on top of the mountains in the east; a Blue Cascade, a water dragon that lived in the south, in and around waterfalls; and a Quaker, an earth dragon that dug tunnels in the mountains in the west.”

His fingers ran over the pages of his journals, following the sentences that he wrote down long ago. “These were all rare dragon’s, but apart from that I can’t see wha-“ He stopped in the middle of his sentence. “The elements!” He called out all of a sudden, making Gry screech in shock.

Dylan stood up and looked down at the puzzle. “Every Cardinal direction has its own element. “North is earth, east is air, south is fire and west is water.” He moved the rings, each dragon to its own element.

When they were in place, Dylan stepped back. The rings fell down to the same high as the middle plate. Behind them a loud scratching sound was audible. Dylan quickly turned and saw a piece of the wall lowering and making a bridge that directed into a pitch black cave.

The young man looked down at Gry and saw that the half bird was just as surprised to see the doorway as Dylan was.

Without hesitation, Dylan grabbed all his journals from the ground and put them back into his bag. “Come, Gry!” He said, maybe a bit to curious and enthusiastic.

He stepped onto the bridge and wasn’t bothered to check if it was safe to step on. He walked to the other side in one go and looked into the darkness, trying to see if he could find where to go.

Gry followed him and stopped next to his feet.

Then all of a sudden the bridge was lifted again and the opening behind them closed completely, leaving them in the dark.

Fear send a shot of adrenaline through Dylan’s veins. “Maybe we should have thought about it a bit better, before we went in.” He said quietly. He tried to look around him, but it was a pitch black. Neither did he knew if there even was a way to get out.

“Gry, you still here?” He asked since the griffin had been quiet ever since the door closed.

Gry brought out a soft coo and touched its owners leg with its head.

“Good.” Dylan said. “Stay close to me.” Then he took slow and careful steps trying not to trip over rocks in the uneven ground.

Out of nowhere a loud growling sounds came from just a few meters before them.

Dylan froze. He waited for another sound, but it didn’t came. “What was that?” He whispered to Gry. The griffin didn’t make a sound, but made sure to let Dylan know he was still there by leaning against his leg.

Another growl was audible, followed by scratching of claws against stone. It almost sounded as if, whatever it was, was in pain or panicked. The growls became louder, angrier and, ‘till Dylan’s shock, closer.

“Get back.” Dylan told Gry and stepped back as well. He reached with his hands behind his back, in case he would walk against a wall. He wanted to turn around and run, but knew that he would walk against a wall for sure.

“Blaze! Come here boy.” A male voice in the distance suddenly called out.

“Come here boy? Seriously?” A second male voice asked. “It’s not a dog.”

Dylan blinked. He wasn’t alone in the cave. He felt relieve and took a deep breath. Maybe these people were trapped as well, but at least he there were people he could talk to if so, who knows maybe they could get out with the three of them. He just wanted to call out for the men when the creature growled again. The young man’s eyes widened when suddenly the cave was lighten by fire that disappeared as soon as it came. A silhouette had appeared in the middle of the fire’s light and for a moment Dylan couldn’t believe what he had seen. A dragon. Was that really what he had seen?

More flame lightened the cave and this time Dylan had to duck away, not to get burned. “Gry!” He called out when he realised that he hadn’t paid attention to his griffin while he duck.

The griffin screeched panicked to its owner from a distance.

Glad that his pet was still alive, he brought out his enthusiasm. “It’s a dragon, Gry! A dragon!” He couldn’t believe his own eyes and words. This wasn’t even the dragon the nutjob had told him about; the dew gatherer was no fire dragon.

“Florean!” The first voice called out. “There is someone down here!”

Dylan tried to find the other two people, but it was far too dark.

“I’m her-“ He was cut off when the dragon growled yet another time and filled the cave with fire.

Dylan jumped away. The dragon turned around still breathing fire. Fascinated by the creature, the young man hadn’t seen the dragon’s tail swiping towards him. Before he knew it he was smacked against the wall. His head slapping against it. Even in the dark, he could see light dots appearing before his eyes, as if he was looking at a clear night with flickering stars. It took only a split second before he completely lost himself in unconsciousness and became even more vulnerable that he already was this close to the dragon.

**To Be Continued**


End file.
